BY W. EDWARD WENDOVER
The corporatized decline of American journalism entered warp speed 25 years ago today -- Nov. 13, 1989 -- in Detroit.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 4 to 4 that morning not to block the Detroit Newspapers’ Joint Operating Agreement, Wall Street and its beancounters realized that neither the Justice Department nor the U.S. courts would ever again stand in the way of consolidation – even monopolization -- of the news industry.
Just as the whole country is now watching the impact of the city of Detroit bankruptcy’s on other cities, the Detroit JOA approval gave the green light to Wall Street’s nationwide takeover of an industry that, up to that point, had largely been run by newspaper and community-minded publishers.
Thus this historic Supreme Court ruling becomes the single most significant governmental event leading to the diminishment of American newspapers. It’s evident to anyone comparing the papers of a quarter century ago to those of today what the sad impact on journalism has been.
“The Detroit Newspaper War” was a take-no-prisoners battle between the two largest newspaper publishing companies – Gannett and Knight-Ridder. During its heyday of the late 1960s to the 1980s, Detroit was regarded as a great newspaper town, with suburban publishers and city magazines joining to share the market. The net effect was great journalism and many options for readers and advertisers.
For example, both The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press sent teams of reporters and photographers to cover events like the tragic crash of Flight 255 in 1987. The papers competed on every angle for days after the catastrophe. For decades, the two papers fought it out on news events and even sporting events – hoping to lure readers (who then attract advertisers) by besting each other.
But the Detroit JOA changed all that. Corporate accountants see no advantage to cutting the bottom line by sending anything but the barest number of reporters and photographers or by expending extra newsprint.
The late Ben Burns, left, a former News editor and head of Wayne State’s journalism program, assessed the JOA in the Detroit Sunday Journal 10 years into the monopoly. “Anyone who claims that the papers are as good as or better than they were before the JOA hasn’t been reading them,” he said.
In the 25 years since the JOA, Detroit newspapers’ circulation and number of pages have dwindled while newsstand prices and advertising costs per thousand have increased. Both readers and advertisers can see the decline.
The JOA hubris also begat the newspaper strike/lockout of July 13, 1995 to Dec. 17, 2000. During the strike, both papers saw huge readership declines from which they have never recovered. (The National Labor Relations Board ruled on June 19, 1997, that the newspapers had “caused” and “prolonged” the strike.)
That arrogance on the part of the newspapers’ owners was evident at the announcement in April 1986 that Gannett and Knight-Ridder would seek a Joint Operating Agreement in Detroit. They said they expected a quick implementation with Justice Department approval.
But not so fast! The Justice Department ordered hearings into the JOA.
Administrative Judge Morton Needelman presided over those hearings into the newspapers’ application, and ruled that the corporate giants’ “losses” were self-made and thus did not warrant the JOA exemption to normal monopoly rules. But then Needelman’s ruling was overturned by his boss, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, just hours before he left office in disgrace.
As the papers scrambled to implement the JOA in August 1988, Michigan Citizens for an Independent Press filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C. to block it. Federal Judge George Revercomb heard the case argued on Sept. 8; he ruled to support Meese’s JOA approval. Michigan Citizens appealed, and on Jan. 28, 1989, the Appeals Court ruled 2 to 1 in favor of the JOA. The citizens’ group (which included many Detroit newspaper employees), filed for an “en banc” decision – an appeal to the entire appeals court.
By a 5 to 4 vote – the Appeals Court came out Feb. 24 in favor of the JOA.
After much soul-searching, Michigan Citizens and its attorneys (from Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen) decided to try for the longest of long shots: an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed on April 5, 1989. First, though, the citizens' group sought an injunction from the high court to block implementation of the JOA; that was denied. But the court had not ruled on whether it would take up the case, so Gannett said it would postpone the JOA until a final determination was made.
On Monday morning, May 1, at 10:01 a.m., Michigan Citizens learned the news in a frantic phone call from a Detroit News editor: “You mother%$#@#$%! You did it! Congratulations! Unbelievable! You’re going to the Supreme Court!” The case would be argued in the fall.
During the weeks of preparation for the high court arguments, U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks, the Texas Democrat who headed the House Judiciary Committee, announced hearings would be held to review the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 – as Michigan Citizens had pleaded. That law had grandfathered in 28 other JOAs – but none nearly as large as Detroit’s would be.
One of the academics testifying in favor of the Newspaper Preservation Act before the Judiciary Committee was Steve Lacy, left, now the Acting Dean of Communications at Michigan State University. He told Congress that a JOA is better than just one newspaper – at least in the short run.
“My research indicates that a city is better off with a JOA than a single newspaper,” Lacy said recently. “History then suggests two things, which have come to pass with time. First, metro areas could not support two independently owned and operated daily newspapers. Second, the JOA process would not preserve the second voice in the long run because the causes of the first point were not due to economies of scale… but because of other product dynamics.”
Michigan Citizens and other critics of JOAs warned the committee that this “artificial” monopoly would tend to further concentrate newspaper ownership, thereby blocking competition from other papers and other media. They also argued that the government had no right to “bless” one segment of the press in a city at the probable expense of competing voices. This included many First Amendment concerns.
Indeed, the Detroit JOA – and resulting media concentration elsewhere -- has proven those fears to be well founded.
Detroit’s JOA was argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 30.
Then, on Nov. 13, 1989, came the stunning news.
The 4-4 tie vote upheld the “en banc” decision of the Appeals Court. Tie votes are rare in Supreme Court history; this one occurred because Justice Byron White sat out. He never explained why.
At the time the Detroit JOA was proposed, a number of Metro Detroit newspapers – daily and weekly – offered competing voices (and advertising alternatives) to The News and Free Press.
Since the JOA, those newspapers have largely been consolidated into one entity – marketed as “Michigan.com.” This agent of the Detroit Newspaper Partnership, cross-markets the JOA, The Free Press, The News, the Livingston County Press & Argus, and the weeklies: the Observer and Eccentric Newspapers, Heritage Newspapers, Hometown Weeklies, the Advisors, the Source and the Voice Newspapers (plus assorted other products like Career Builder classifieds).
This 8,000-pound monster in the metro Detroit marketplace grew over 25 years as Gannett and Journal Register Newspapers (now Digital First) bought up existing newspaper groups and were linked by the most peculiar event of the Detroit JOA: the Great Overnight Ownership Swap.
In a surprise announcement in August 2005, Gannett bought the Free Press from Knight-Ridder and sold The News to Media News Group. The Justice Department never even peeped when the previously “failing” Free Press suddenly became the desirable behemoth running the Detroit JOA.
Knight-Ridder’s foray into the Detroit JOA proved its undoing – its management could not compete on Wall Street and the publishing giant ceased to exist altogether a year later. (Only its embarrassed top executives’ golden parachutes remain.)
With that JOA ownership swap and other buyouts, sellouts and “consolidations,” the metro-Detroit market for newspapers is now some 90% owned by JOA participants. That was certainly not what the Newspaper Preservation Act intended.
Today, twenty five years after the JOA, an advertising salesperson from independent newspapers like The Grosse Pointe News, the Canton Eagle, the Oxford Leader, C&G Newspapers or The Metro Times, must fight an uphill battle against a mega-monopoly representing the Free Press, The News, and their intertwined daily and weekly publications. Salesfolk from websites, radio and TV face the same JOA-armed gangup – sanctioned by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, this common ownership of the great bulk of Southeast Michigan newspapers has less incentive to provide more journalism. The corporatization of newspapers throughout America can see explicit results in Detroit where the JOA really kicked into gear a quarter century ago.
To be sure, Detroit’s journalists are as personally motivated and professional as anywhere. Coverage of disgraced former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and commentary on Detroit and its fiscal problems have netted Pulitzer Prizes.
But would there be more publications and more aggressive journalists/journalism under true competition? Almost certainly.
Lacy suggests that the corporate takeover of the American press began when Gannett Newspapers decided to go public – providing the green persuasion needed to buy out underperforming and lazy publishers’ other newspapers around the country.
Or, some journalism historians argue, the beginning of the end actually come on the night of Nov. 7, 1960 when the Free Press “bulldog edition” scooped its rival(s) by breaking the story that The Detroit Times had been bought and shuttered – without printing its own obituary -- by The News.
Maybe A. J. Liebling, left, the noted American press critic, was right. He assailed the newspaper sell-outs, “mergers” and connected closings in Chicago, Detroit and Albany. “The two survivors in Detroit both proclaimed that they were going to furnish even more news than they did before the disappearance of their competitor, which is like a saloon keeper saying he was doubling the free lunch now that he had bought out the joint next door. It’s against human nature.”
Liebling’s view would be that Detroit’s grand era of newspapering and its “Newspaper War” in the 1960s through the 1980s meant that Detroit was just living on borrowed time.
Defenders of the JOA blame everything from the labor unions and inner-city population decline to the internet for Detroit losing its mantle as a great newspaper town. But they can’t deny that putting beancounters at the helm made newspapers in Detroit (and elsewhere), more anti-union and less responsive to the growing internet opportunities and shifting populations.
But perhaps the best description of 25 years of the Detroit JOA can be taken from the JOA’s own “Michigan.com” website's “Integrated Marketing” appeal to advertisers, summarizing its overpowering monopolistic attitude as “Michigan’s largest media and marketing company:”
“…tightening every screw of your targeting every day.”
Wendover is a media and political consultant in Cadillac. He served as co-chair of Michigan Citizens for an Independent Press, and for 26 years was publisher of The Community Crier, which served Plymouth and Canton.
For additional reading: “Paper Losses -- A Modern Epic of Greed & Betrayal at America’s Two Largest Newspaper Companies,” by Bryan Gruley.
